Survivor
by whatswiththemustache
Summary: A closer look at Julia's mental state after the events of 1x13.


Ever since Ember's touch, Julia has been living halfway between two realities.

One is trying to pull her along with it, cold and unforgiving but liveable. The other is trying to eat her alive.

There's a kind of balance to how constantly unbalanced they are - every moment, _reality_ (the real one) is tugging at her, trying to catch her attention with hurried words and passing sensations - trying to drag her back into the present. The phantom reality doesn't have to try. She's been drowning in it, ever since Ember, suffocating underneath phantom touches, phantom laughter, a bloody phantom grin.

Before, Quentin had told her about the emotion bottles - he'd given her a run down on everything that had happened, while they were killing time back in 1942, and that part of story had been one of the more difficult. Hedge witch magic that temporarily took away emotions, _bottling them up_ for a few hours in exchange for a perfectly clear mind - crude, of course, and it showed in the aftereffects. The emotions came back like a punch to the gut, hitting you like a train. Quentin had told her about that too - about how taking back his emotions had felt like waking up in the middle of the worst day of his life. How a leaden weight had dropped into his stomach like it'd never left, dragging at his every limb. How every single self-deprecating thought that had every crossed his mind - every whisper of self-doubt and every vaguely suicidal whim - had all come rushing back into his head, crowding out everything else, battering against the walls of sanity he'd built for himself and tearing away at the semblance of confidence he'd learned to put on like a show.

It certainly hadn't sounded _good_.

But now - _this_. She keeps thinking back to those emotion bottles, if only in yet another attempt to distract herself. Locking your emotions away in a bottle for a few hours; how did that line up against putting a patch on your own memory - like a bandage, almost, covering up a gaping wound and hiding it away, letting it quietly fester and rot underneath where she can't see - only to have that patch ripped away? How did that line up against what she'd been trying to cover up in the first place?

The emotion magic had sounded bad, but this is worse. The similarities she'd tried to find between the two had a distinct end. With the emotion magic, the emotions came back all at once, but then they settled; it took a few hours, sure, but then it was over. Recovered.

Days, weeks later - she can't see this subsiding. Whether that's because of the whole memory-patch-ripped-off-like-a-band-aid thing, or simply because of -

_Blood. Red, splashed and sprinkled across white. Catlike eyes, cruel and yellow and laughing at her - _

Theflash cuts off with her gasping, _choking_ \- again, and _again_, so many times she's lost count - but it doesn't end there. The images still flicker behind her eyelids.

The phantom reality is always there. Scratching, clawing, _suffocating_ her, burying everything real and tearing it all back to that moment – moments – an agonizing eternity that hasn't ended, even now, not since Ember decided to _gift_ her with the truth –

Not for the first time, she curses him – for his ignorance, or his cruelty, or whatever it was that possessed him to rip away the only thing holding her together. Not for the first time, she wonders fleetingly if he would take her memories back, if she asked. If anyone could.

_"Can you take my memory? Please- take my memory." _

_She's sobbing, choking on air, and her tears are burning icy trails down her cheeks in the cold. Still, somehow getting the words out - she can't find the energy to be surprised. Can't think of anything, really, except the urge to run, to curl up on the ground, to rip her own skin off. Everything is wrong, and she can't get away fast enough - _

_Quentin's still trying to hold onto her arm. Trying to comfort her, to ground her, to be _Quentin_. Of course he is. That doesn't change the fact that every time he touches her, the breath in her lungs turns to ice, burning colder than fire; her skin crawls, her gut drops. In that long-too-long, unbearable moment, she would be fighting for her life if she could - but she can't, she's trapped, and it's with a distant kind of certainty that she realizes she'd rather be dead. _

_Wishing herself dead isn't familiar territory for her. She's never been suicidal. But now, there's no room for shock, or disappointment, or any of the things she'd always thought she might feel if she ever did reach that point. There's nothing but that laugh, ringing in her ears - those fingers, digging into her arm - _

_It's not Quentin's hands that she's feeling, grabbing at her, trying to hold her in place. These hands are crueler, stronger, infinitely more blood-soaked. _

_"I- I don't know how." Quentin's voice - apology and alarm and concern, mixed with a creeping sadness that he doesn't even know the reason for yet. Julia heaves another sobbing gasp, closing her eyes - regretting it. Trying to ignore the feeling of a crushing weight on her back - the hot, wet breath searing at her ear, at the back of her neck - _

_She doesn't have enough focus, right now, to pull apart reality from the memories - she can barely stand, let alone do that. But her eyes are open - the dark behind her eyelids isn't dark enough - and through the tears in her eyes, she can just make out her surroundings. Quentin, standing a few feet from her, slouching slightly, wearing that puppy-eyed, creased sad face, looking like he wants more than anything to wrap her up in a hug just to do _something _\- but he doesn't. He isn't touching her arm. He'd stopped as soon as she'd asked him to the first time. Of course he had. _

_But there's someone there, behind her, pinning her to bloodstained floorboards, pressing a heavy forearm down into her shoulder blades - hissing in her ear, dripping something hot and thick and wet along the side of her cheek - and somehow, all of that is almost worse than the pain, the searing burning tearing overwhelming agony, shooting through her body, ripping down her thighs and into her abdomen. Almost. _

_Phantom reality. Phantom pains. A phantom monster, wearing a phantom Richard's body, grinning and laughing as it presses itself tighter and tighter against a phantom Julia, crying and helpless and trapped. _

-trapped.

Nothing's changed since then, not really. Reynard is gone, and her floorboards are clean, and she could put the whole thing behind her if she wanted to. Except of course she can't. Except it still feels like it'll never go away.

That's what the phantom reality does. It hasn't left her once since Ember. Like a constant itch in the back of her throat, unscratchable and impossible to ignore. It clings to her. Hissing, screaming, cackling; like a tapping in her ear, incessant and maddening.

Richard - _Reynard_ \- his face, flashing in her mind's eye - grinning that gaping bloody grin.

It's driving her insane. Maybe it already has. Maybe that's why everything Julia does feels pointless, and everywhere she looks - she feels like she isn't really _looking_, because in her mind she can't look away from the memory of it all -

Every moment of every day, she feels like she's spiraling down a dark hole, cold and pitch black and bottomless. Except there _is _a bottom, and that's where he is. Waiting. Clawing at her feet. Pulling her down with him. No way out.

And maybe that's why she hadn't felt guilty, not even for a second, back there at the wellspring where she'd stood, frozen, trapped between the phantom reality and _this _one, where the Beast was leisurely maiming and killing Quentin's friends, one by one, right in front of her. She'd heard all about the Beast from Quentin - he'd told her about the attacks, the dreams, Jane's brutal death and the probability futures that were somehow even worse. She knew just how much of a monster Martin Chatwin really was, and she'd been ready to face him - because she also knew just how powerful he must be.

While the others were all getting ready, prepared and plotting before the confrontation, she'd already figured out exactly what she needed to do. They were dealing with monsters and gods and bigger magic than any of them, and she was little more than a weak, insignificant magician who'd never get a better opportunity than this. The others had argued and planned and argued again, and all the while she'd been stuck in the same single, looping thought - _Ember made me remember. Ember was banished by the Beast. Ember is a god. Reynard is a god. The Beast can fuck with gods. I need the Beast. _

She'd looked at his stupid smug British face and gripped the blade tighter, thinking, _he can't be as bad as Reynard_.

And then Alice had started spurting out blood, and then Penny had too, and then everything had gone white - Julia was back in her apartment, and there was blood on the floor, and Richard's face was twisting, morphing, grinning. Someone was screaming - _she _was screaming -

But time works strangely in flashbacks, and the phantom Reynard had already done everything he could possibly do to her in the time it took the Beast to get to Quentin - time enough for her to remember where she was, and _why_, and that nothing could be as bad as this. Time enough for her to remember the knife, and the plan, and the plan she'd come up with instead. It had already backfired a little, because people were dying, _again_, but she couldn't help that now. She couldn't help anyone but herself, _maybe_, if she could only just _move _-

So she had. She'd moved forward, forward, until the knife in her hand was at Martin Chatwin's throat. _Let's make a deal._

That semblance of control she'd felt then hadn't returned in any of the subsequent flashbacks she'd experienced - still hasn't, not even for a moment. Maybe that's why she still refuses to apologize for what she did. She's not sorry. If she'd done nothing back in Fillory, and Alice had killed the Beast with no trouble, _then _she'd have been sorry. Because then she wouldn't have felt that sliver of control, even for a second. Then she wouldn't know that she _could_.

Then she'd still be crushed, bleeding, curled up underneath an arrogant, evil god's boot, unable to move or cry for help or even breathe. That was her. In some ways, that still is.

But she _knows _now, miraculously, that she can be strong again. She still has it in her. It wasn't burned out of her in the fires of everything that she's been through.

If not anything else, Julia has this - the knowledge that she can save herself. She _will. _She did it before, and she'll damned well do it again.

In the meantime - the agonizing eternity in between - she'll have to wait, and survive. She can do it. The phantom reality hasn't killed her yet.


End file.
